Tribune Co. believes it will still emerge from bankruptcy protection this year even though a court-appointed examiner concluded that talks leading up to a leveraged buyout of the company had bordered on fraud.

In a memo to employees, Tribune CEO Randy Michaels and Chief Operating Officer Gerald Spector said they agreed with only some of the conclusions in Monday's report, while disputing others. They did not go into specifics, saying it would be premature to comment while the full examiner's report remains under court seal.

A hearing on whether to release the nearly 700-page document was scheduled for Thursday in Wilmington, Del.

The 2007 leveraged buyout took the company private and ultimately helped land it in Chapter 11. The deal has drawn scrutiny from bondholders who are trying to recover more of their money.

Real estate mogul Sam Zell led the deal, which piled on what turned out to be an unsustainable amount of debt. The company, which owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angles Times and other properties, filed for Chapter 11 protection in December 2008.

A Springdale woman has been sentenced to six months of work release and fined $2,000 in the heat stroke deaths of her two children who had locked themselves in the trunk of a car.

Twenty-five-year-old Katrina Markley pleaded guilty Monday to two misdemeanor counts of third-degree endangering the welfare of a minor in the deaths of 5-year-old Curtis Markley and 4-year-old Virginia Markley. She was sentenced to six months of work release that involves supervised community service work during the day and nights spent in a barracks-style building at the county jail.

Police say Markley admitted she was on the computer most of the day when her children locked themselves in the trunk of a car in June 2009 and died of heat stroke.

With more than $67 billion of its insurance coverage placed into a special receivership fund, Ambac Assurance Corp. is flirting with financial ruin. Yet at the same time, lawyers and consultants helping Wisconsin regulators navigate the complex case have collected nearly $18 million for their efforts.

And the meter is still running.

At the top of the billing list, state records show, is Foley & Lardner, the Milwaukee-based law firm with close ties to Gov. Jim Doyle. Employees of Foley have contributed $355,596 to Doyle's campaigns since 1999, more than any other group from one employer, according to data analyzed by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign at the Journal Sentinel's request.

Foley, the state's largest law firm, has billed the state $6.6 million for its work on the Ambac case since it was hired in February 2008 - more than four times the next highest sum paid to an outside special counsel for one case since Doyle took office in 2003, according to the state attorney general's office.

Three Foley attorneys, including David Walsh, a longtime friend and major contributor to Doyle, have billed more than $1 million each for their Ambac work. Walsh and members of his family have contributed $64,520 to Doyle's campaigns since 1999, including $40,520 since 2003, topping the list of all individual contributors to Doyle, according to the Democracy Campaign, which analyzes campaign finance reports filed with the state.

Marc Marotta, a Doyle confidant who chaired his 2006 campaign and served on the governor's cabinet, is a Foley partner who has billed 24 hours on the Ambac case. State Insurance Commissioner Sean Dilweg, who hired Foley for the Ambac case, was a top aide to Marotta in the state Department of Administration before being named insurance commissioner in 2007.

A former New Hampshire high school teacher has pleaded guilty to a charge she e-mailed nude photographs of herself to a 15-year-old student.

Forty-one-year-old Melinda Dennehy of Hampstead entered the plea Monday to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure.

As part of a plea agreement, Dennehy was given a suspended jail sentence on the condition that she remain on good behavior and have no contact with the child or go to the high school.

In court, Dennehy apologized for her actions and poor judgment. She told the court she's continuing counseling and hopes to lead a productive life.

Dennehy was arrested in March after the photos were found circulating around the high school. She resigned three weeks later.

A South Texas man accused of beheading his common-law wife's three children was found guilty of capital murder Monday at his second trial.

A state appeals court had overturned John Allen Rubio's previous conviction and death sentence in 2007, saying the children's mother had wrongly been allowed to testify. A second jury deliberated for about three hours before convicting him again.

Rubio, 29, of Brownsville, had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his defense attorneys had argued that the sheer brutality of the crime showed he was not in his right mind. Defense attorney Nat Perez described it during his closing argument as "overkill."

Evidence showed Rubio made increasingly ferocious attempts to kill the children, strangling and stabbing them, then finally cutting off their heads. Rubio initially said he killed the children, all under age 4, because they were possessed.

Police discovered the bodies of 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio on March 11, 2003, in a squalid Brownsville apartment.

Rubio was convicted on four counts of capital murder. Each death was covered by one count, and the fourth count included all of them.

The trial will now move to a punishment phase, in which prosecutors plan to again seek the death penalty.

A federal appeals court in Virginia has reversed a judge's ruling requiring the nation's largest public utility to promptly install upgraded emission controls at four coal-fired power plants.

Three of the Tennessee Valley Authority plants are in Tennessee, and the other is in Alabama.

U.S. District Judge Lacy Thornburg had ordered the accelerated cleanup at the TVA plants, ruling that emissions affecting air quality in North Carolina's scenic western mountains were a "public nuisance."

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond overturned that ruling Monday. Appeals court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote that allowing the ruling to stand would undermine the nation's carefully created regulatory scheme.

US Airways has asked a federal judge to resolve a seniority dispute involving its pilots.

Executives with the Tempe, Ariz.-based carrier said Monday's legal action in U.S. District Court in Phoenix is called a complaint for declaratory relief. They say the dispute has significantly stalled efforts to negotiate a joint contract covering the 4,000 pilots joined together by the merger of America West and US Airways five years ago.

The airline's pilots union says it will vigorously oppose the company's move. The US Airline Pilots Association says the court has no jurisdiction in labor contract negotiations.

Seniority is important to pilots and flight attendants because it dictates their schedules, pay, vacations and promotions.